The Hurricane Monument at Mile Marker 81.5

Islamorada, twenty minutes south of Key Largo. A coral-rock obelisk marking the mass grave of victims of the 1935 Labor Day Hurricane — the most powerful to make US landfall. 185 mph sustained winds, twenty-foot storm surge, 400+ dead. Most were WWI veterans in a federal work relief program, housed in flimsy camps with no evacuation plan.

A rescue train from Miami arrived too late — the surge swept the tracks, overturned the locomotive, killed many it was sent to save. Hemingway drove up from Key West, surveyed the damage, and wrote for New Masses: "Who sent nearly a thousand war veterans to live in frame shacks on the Florida Keys in hurricane months?" The essay named names. The political fallout improved hurricane warning systems.

Most drivers pass the monument at fifty-five without stopping. The bones beneath it belong to men who survived the trenches and died in a labor camp because their government housed them in hurricane country without a plan. Two minutes to pull over and read the plaque is the minimum the story deserves.